John Hollis: What Happened To The Actor Who Played Lobot In Star Wars?
While his name may not sound familiar casual Star Wars fans, die-hards should recognize Lobot as Lando Calrissian's (Billy Dee Williams) assistant in Cloud City on Bespin. In the live-action film series, Lobot is only on-screen for a few minutes, but after "The Empire Strikes Back," Lobot's journey continues in both canonical and non-canonical expanded universe stories. Because of his involvement in an original trilogy film and subsequent importance to the broader Star Wars continuity, Lobot's impact on the franchise is larger than his total amount of time on-camera might suggest.
Playing Lobot in this brief, noteworthy appearance is an actor named John Hollis. "The Empire Strikes Back" premiered in theaters in 1980, by which point he was already more than a decade into his acting career. That same year, Hollis was a part of two additional blockbuster films — he was a Krypton elder in "Superman II," reprising a role from the 1978 Christopher Reeves "Superman" film, and appeared briefly in "Flash Gordon." His only other post-Star Wars theatrical film roles were an uncredited part in the James Bond movie "For Your Eyes Only," a voice acting gig as a main character in the English dub of the Dutch animated movie "Valhalla," and a part in "Superman IV: The Quest for Peace" unrelated to his previous "Superman" character. Then, in 1999, his final acting credit was in a TV movie opposite Louise Lombard and F. Murray Abraham titled "The Bible Collection: Esther." He died six years later, in 2005.
John Hollis remained active after Star Wars
After joining the Star Wars franchise, the majority of John Hollis' filmography consisted of TV work rather than parts in feature films. During that time, he appeared in one or two episodes of shows like "The Day of the Triffids," "Brass," "The Lenny Henry Show," and "Grange Hill," among others. He was also in eight episodes of a 1984 BBC show titled "Badger Girl" and a 1995 TV movie titled "The Great Kandinsky."
Both before and after Star Wars, Hollis was well-known for his work as a radio actor, too, voicing characters in BBC radio dramas like an adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel "Great Expectations." Author Iain Lowson even published a 1997 interview with Hollis on his personal blog Embra, again. conducted through the mail. While they primarily discussed his time playing Lobot, Hollis claimed that it was becoming increasingly difficult to find acting work at that point in his career, so he was shifting his focus to voice work instead. By the time of his death in 2005, Hollis seemed to have been prioritizing voice-only roles. Fans of his work as Lobot interested in this facet of his career can hear him in recordings of some Shakespeare classics like a 2003 audiobook release of "The Taming of the Shrew."